Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 3226 contributions
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
You say:
“Our manifesto calls for five-year funding timescales and we believe this stability would allow third sector organisations to be truly creative, ambitious and impactful.”
I think that it would, but the Scottish Parliament does not have a five-year funding arrangement, so it is very difficult for the Scottish Parliament to deliver that. Two and a half years ago, we would not have anticipated a pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and so on. There are always imponderables that can arise. The issue is in trying to have that stability when it is difficult to anticipate what lies further ahead and budgets are not made available so far ahead.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I agree with that, but I am looking at this from a ministerial point of view. I know that some local authorities will say, “Look—we do not need additional teachers. What we need is a peripatetic higher biology teacher for the six kids in each school doing advanced highers in sixth year. It seems daft to have an extra teacher to cover that in each school, so we will just have one.” However, the headline in the media is still the reduction in teacher numbers or whatever. The political imperative, if you like, is what the public see and, in that example, what the public are seeing is fewer teachers in their area, not an improvement in the delivery of advanced higher in biology. That is the absolute nub of this. Ministers would really like to give local government more flexibility—and, of course, local government would like more flexibility, too—but they are perhaps concerned that politics gets in the way of delivering on these outcomes. That is what I am suggesting. How do we square that circle with a hostile media?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Here is a man who will say it once: Douglas.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
We talked about decluttering with the previous witnesses.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Absolutely.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
That concludes questions from committee members, but I still have a couple of questions that touch on areas that we have not covered yet.
The first is for Mirren Kelly. The submission from COSLA talks about the impact of the national outcomes on the economy as one example of collaborative working. It says that
“the Business Gateway National Unit in COSLA ... works extensively and in collaboration with the Scottish Government, the three enterprise agencies, Skills Development Scotland, Visit Scotland and Creative Scotland as well as all 32 Councils.”
It goes on to talk about community planning partnerships and other structures, such as integration joint boards. One area that is not covered, but I am sure that it is also in your mind, is city and regional deals.
Do you feel that delivery of the national outcomes would benefit from a decluttering of the public sector landscape?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
You have talked about sharing internally, but what about either learning from or sharing with other local authorities?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
I would be delighted if you did. You have mentioned the no wrong door initiative a couple of times. I am quite intrigued by that. Resources are tight and are likely to be tight for the foreseeable future, and I hope that, if best practice can be shared, resources will be spent at a more optimum level than perhaps happens at the moment across Scotland.
I will finish where I started, with a point for Mirren Kelly, which is also on the question about sharing examples of good practice. Again, I was somewhat disappointed in COSLA’s response to that question. Your response said:
“This has involved working collaboratively with a range of organisations, where workstreams with a range of stakeholders have been set up to progress each of the agreed outcomes.”
There was a sentence before that, and a long sentence after it, but not really any specific examples of best practice, as I would consider it, where improvements have been made. If we are going to deliver on the outcomes, it is important, as I have already pointed out, that we share that information. Do you have any specific direct examples that you can share?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
Yes—or services delivered by the NHS, for example; I would imagine that there would be issues there.
Are there any further points that our witnesses want to make before we end the session?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Kenneth Gibson
When the national performance framework was set up, John Swinney, who was the finance secretary at the time, had an overview of it. Of course, he is now the Deputy First Minister, and he still has an overview of it.
